Mobile phones have increasingly become tools that consumers use for banking, payments, budgeting, and shopping. Given the rapid pace of developments in the area of mobile finance, the Federal Reserve Board began conducting annual surveys of consumers’ use of mobile financial services in 2011. This 78-page report, “Consumers and Mobile Financial Services” (March, 2015) examines trends in the adoption and use of mobile banking, payments, and shopping behavior and how the emergence of mobile financial services affects consumers’ interaction with financial institutions.
KreditFly Launches Mobile Payment Solution Available to 300 Million U.S. Mobile Phone Customers
A new player in mobile has launched its mobile payment service today. KreditFly, a flexible mobile payment solutions is available to all 300 million mobile subscribers in the United States, allowing users to immediately use their mobile phones to complete online transactions, and choose the method of payment. On the merchant side, online merchants can take mobile-authenticated payments from their customers at percentage fees in the teens, as opposed to 50% for Premium SMS-based mobile payments.
With KreditFly’s relatively low fees and accessibility to all mobile users, the company expects a dramatic increase in conversion of non-paying users to paying users on the KreditFly site.
Paul Kim, Founder and CEO of KreditFly said, “KreditFly is pioneering a way for our merchant partners to pay significantly lower processing fees, while enjoying the benefit of 300 million potential customers in the US who can become paying users. Until now, the only way to convert users quickly via mobile phone without user pre-registration was to place the charge onto the mobile carrier bill, but the high fees charged to merchants and reliability issues with Premium SMS have prevented truly widespread adoption of mobile payments in the US. KreditFly has now introduced a service that maintains all of the benefits of mobile-authenticated payments, including the speed, security, ubiquity, and high conversion rates, without the excessive fees.”
<strong>How KreditFly Works</strong>
Micro-credit process, a consumer who does not have a KreditFly account can still complete a transaction and receive his good without having to sign up with KreditFly beforehand. The buyer simply selects KreditFly during checkout, enters his mobile number into the payment page, receives a 4-digit code on his mobile phone, then enters the code back into the online payment page along with his email address. That’s it – the transaction takes only seconds, and the user gets the good from the merchant immediately. Then, within 7 days after the transaction, the user must register with KreditFly and complete payment through any of the payment options that KreditFly offers. KreditFly has developed strong, proprietary methodologies to follow up with users to ensure payment completion.
When users register with KreditFly, those who own credit cards or bank accounts can securely connect their account to these payment options. Those who do not have such options can instead choose to load up their KreditFly account with funds and use it like a debit account by purchasing various prepaid cards that are available at nationwide retail stores (e.g. Walmart, Kroger, Target, 7-Eleven, Walgreens, etc.), or by mailing in cash or money orders directly to KreditFly. Users will soon have other innovative choices, like KreditFly’s PayForMeTM option, which allows users to request one-time payment or recurring allowance from their parents or friends. KreditFly plans to continue adding new and innovative payment methods for its users over time. Regardless of the funding method, each transaction by a registered user is secured with two-factor authentication and takes just seconds to complete by entering a 4-digit code received on the mobile phone and a password established during registration.
Vu Hoang, Co-founder and CFO of Aeria Games (www.aeriagames.com), a partner of KreditFly and leading online game publisher with over 15 million members, asserted that “with KreditFly’s low fees and accessibility to all mobile users, we expect a dramatic increase in conversion of non-paying users to paying users on our site. KreditFly cleverly uses the mobile phone to extend credit to our trusted community, while creating strong accountability and follow-up for payments.”
KreditFly also brings a social aspect into play, rewarding users generously for activities like paying with KreditFly and inviting friends. Users earn KreditFly Points, which can be used like cash at partner sites to get free things like in-game items, virtual currency, music, etc.
KreditFly is launching its beta service with a select group of companies and games, including Aeria Games (www.aeriagames.com), Age of Champions (http://apps.facebook.com/ageofchampions by KlickNation), and Destiny Stone (http://apps.facebook.com/destinystone by Manic Frog). The company is growing its merchant partnership quickly and will announce additional partners shortly.
Source: Business Wire